Pretty Damn Happy

There is a secret city in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, where everyone who lives there

owns a few money trees, planted in front of their million dollar home, next to their three $80,000 cars, obviously. 

The folks that find this city are given secret seeds to the sacred money trees. 

It’s their ‘reward’ for finding the hidden city. 

They just have to sell their eyesight to receive them.

Most do.

A few turn away. 

Most plant their sacred seeds and wait for them to grow.

They harvest and buy a home.

They harvest and go on vacation.

They harvest and buy a car or four.

Sure, they can’t see anything,

but at least they have money,

and this makes them incredibly happy.

You see, 

in this country, 

poor americans 

are encouraged to 

hate themselves.

It’s true, Kurt (Vonnegut) told me.

Here, in good ol America, the poor mock themselves for being poor and glorify their betters. Think about it for a moment. 

. . .

Kurt said that Howard Campell said this,

“Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is easy for ANY American to make money. Americans refuse to acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.”

Even though America is the richest country in the world, everyone knows it’s full of poor, mentally ill, sad people. 

But in this secret city in the Pacific Northwest, everyone is extremely happy. And they are all, somehow, plastic and skinny. 

Kurt said Howard went on yapping about Americans, saying this about us, 

“Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves . . .” So it goes. 

The poor don’t love themselves here. No. They’re encouraged to hate themselves for being poor—which is an inherent fate for most of us who weren’t born into wealth. I suppose one of the things to take away from this is, we can’t actually love someone else if we don’t love ourselves. And in this country, the popular culture is to hate oneself. 

That would mean, we can’t love someone else if we don’t love ourselves . . . I suppose there is some sense to that. This would be why a true narcissist can’t love anything, especially not themselves. They aren’t good enough for themselves. And those they claim to love are ‘too good’ for them, while paradoxically, never being good enough. All because they don’t believe they’re worthy of the love they so desperately want—because they can’t love themselves. Their standards for their own self is too high, creating a state of perpetual spiraling disappointment in the self about the self. In a world where nothing is perfect or permanent, so many cling to fantasies of their own perfection and permanence.  

I guess this answers my question about a question, which was, 

“Do we always believe 

       the person we are in love with 

            deserves the very best? 

But,

                                                    how much do we have to love our own selves 

          to believe 

         we are what they 

            deserve? 

Or,

  will we always believe 

       they deserve better than us? 

Maybe the answer is, we can only love someone else as much as we love ourselves. 

. . .

Oh shit! The secret city! I forgot. Let me see. Let me see . . . Yes, that’s right, everyone who lived there had a few money trees. They couldn’t see anything, but they were pretty damn happy. After all, they couldn’t see the poor anymore, and they had gotten what society said they would need to be happy. It’s just a shame they couldn’t see. The secret city was actually very pretty. Very pretty, indeed. So it goes.

CH 4/21/26